Advantages
Advantages Index Below is the grand total of advantages, sorted alphabetically. The current list of appropriate rarity values is: Special, Common (+1), Uncommon (+2), Rare (+3), Exceptional (+5), and Legendary (+7). Additional tags may include: Item, Follower/Leadership, Vehicle/Warbeast, Difficult, and Profession. With the exception of Profession, all advantages with an additional tag count as being one rarity grade higher in terms of the bonus they grant. If you want clarification on what any of the terms mean, see the glossary at the bottom. Without further ado, here's the advantages index. Feel free to add your own advantages and a short descriptive blurb to the index - but link to a new page to define the mechanics and fluff in detail! Acrobatics (Uncommon) - Enhanced balance and mobility - a more focused "Agility" Agility (Common) - Generally being faster than others in terms of reflexes, speed, grace, etc. Air Magic (Common) - The ability to magically manipulate the air nearby. Armor (Uncommon) - Your character is more resistant to physical attacks. Artifact (???: Item) - Another term for an Item advantage. Brawling (Uncommon) - Allows for more proficient melee combat Beauty (Rare) - A more focused "Charm" that only works on those that find your PC attractive and can see it Charisma (Common) - Your PC has a powerful and magnetic personality Charm (Uncommon) - A more focused "Charisma" that doesn't allow you to intimidate or inspire people Combat Expertise: ??? (Uncommon) - a specialty in a given fighting style Cunning (Common) - Makes your PC more of a guile hero, applying wits to defeat many kinds of challenges Dexterity (Uncommon) - Greater proficiency with one's hands - a more focused "Agility" Earth Magic (Common) - The ability to manipulate nearby earth and stone. Educated (Uncommon) - Your character is well educated and highly literate - a more focused "Intelligence" "Elemental" Combat Magic (Uncommon) - a variant on Earth/Air/Water magic that only applies to combat. Fire Magic (Uncommon) - The ability to generate and manipulate fire. Uncommon by default because fire has a limited number of utility purposes. Flight (Common: Difficult) - Your character has some means of defying gravity Foresight (Uncommon) - The combat variant of foresight allows impossible response times Intelligence (Common) - Makes your character smarter than average Intimidating (Rare) - a significantly more focused "Charisma" that only works for intimidation purposes Light Magic (???) - reserved Perceptive (Common) - your character can see/hear/smell etc. more acutely Sailor (Common: Profession) - enhances all things related to sailing Speed (Common) - your character is faster than normal, though not necessarily more graceful Strength (Common) - each rank doubles your strength, with "average grown man" as the baseline Rogue (Common: Profession) - enhances stealth, intrusion, ambush tactics, and disabling standing defenses Shapeshifting (Common: Difficult) - your character has some means of changing physical form Size (Common) - your character is much bigger than normal. Functions as half a rank of Strength and Toughness, with some other side effects. "Subject" Expert (Rare) - Your character is well versed in a certain field - a more focused "Educated" Teleportation (Common: Difficult) - any means to reach point A from point B without crossing the space between. Toughness (Common) - Your character is resistant to damage, poison, disease, and general physical hardship Water Magic (Common) - The ability to manipulate nearby water. Normally uncommon, but not in a game called "High Seas Adventure" Wealth (Special) - your character has much more money than normal, including a higher income Well-Traveled (Special) - Allows greater familiarity with various languages and cultures A glossary of relevent terms: Common (+1) Common advantages can be used in a wide variety of situations. By default, any advantage that operates both in and out of combat is considered a common advantage. Profession advantages are likewise always common. Uncommon (+2) Uncommon advantages are more restricted in use than common advantages, but may show up as often as a certain kind of situation - for instance, "Combat Only" advantages are frequently listed as Uncommon. Indeed, "Combat Only" and "Non-Combat" is the most frequently used division, though others exist. Rare (+3) Rare advantages are even more restricted and situational, and as they have been used so far tend to be "Anti-Something," although there is no rule that says they have to be. A combat advantage that only works against a certain type of creature (other than "people") would be rare, as would a resistance to fire-based attacks. Another example is Beauty - a kind of Charm that only works on people that could find your character physically attractive. Exceptional (+5) Exceptional advantages are highly unlikely to come into play outside of very specific situations. A combat-only advantage that only works on a very specific subset of a type of creature, for instance, or else an advantage that can only be used once per chapter. Legendary (+7) Legendary advantages almost certainly guarantee that your character is the very best in the land at doing something extremely specific. Reading a special, dead language would be one option, as would singing a certain kind of song to a specific audience, or being able to banish demons, but only under the light of the full moon on days that don't fall inside any month, on odd-numbered years. Special (+0) A special advantage is one that seems like it could be useful, but doesn't provide a bonus to any contest rolls. Mostly, it opens up in-story options for your character, such as allowing you to justify speaking a number of languages or modifying a different advantage in some new way that lets you do more with it. Profession A profession advantage is a special kind of common advantage that defines a wide skillset that a character would obtain by vitue of being a soldier, sailor, scholar, etc. Item An item advantage is what it sounds like - a normal advantage that is attached to an item instead of directly to your character. Item advantages count as one rarity higher than they actually are IF AND ONLY IF they are somehow obvious or cumbersome. The question to ask yourself is - "Would guards take this from me on a standard search?" If the answer is "No" then it counts at the normal rarity. A concealed ring with an Uncommon advantage on it grants a +2. A greataxe with an Uncommon advantage on it grants a +3. Follower/Leadership An advantage granted to your followers is likewise upgraded in rarity if there is a good chance that you might get separated from them at some point. Follower advantages are tricky, since theoretically even a powerful PC should be able to get overwhelmed by a hundred soldiers. Please work with the setting and the other players to make sure that you use followers responsibly. And if you are making a contest roll against someone *with* followers, please work with them to determine if and how the followers can participate. Vehicle/Warbeast Likewise, any advantage that is applied to a Vehicle or a Warbeast (any large, dangerous creature) that you might have to leave somewhere is upgraded by one bonus category. Please note that the concealed magical rabid weasel in your pocket does not count as a "warbeast." Any advantage applied to a player character with an "Alternate Form" that only works in said alternate form can be counted up a bonus category IF that alternate form would qualify as a Warbeast. Difficult Finally, some advantages are still point-blank overpowered even when they adhere to the "one advantage = one trick" rule and have been reduced to Common. Things like Shapeshifting, Teleportation, and Flight are all heavily restricted. Please see the mods if you want to talk about an extremely powerful and versatile advantage.